At last one day I saw a couple of Russian cavalry officers in the town; and hurrying back to my quarters as fast as possible, I sent old Tom Rennison up to headquarters to find out what had happened. He brought back news that they were two parlementaires, who brought telegrams from Constantinople viâ St. Petersburg, notifying the commander-in-chief that the town would be occupied by Russian troops in accordance with the terms of an armistice.
When old Kurd Ismail Pasha heard this news, he wept tears of rage and tore his beard in a frenzy of grief. The troops also, in spite of their terrible losses by wounds and sickness, were very despondent at the prospect of the town being occupied by the enemy without another blow being struck in its defence. Lamentations, however, were useless; and two days later the gates were opened, and General Melikoff, surrounded by his staff, rode into Erzeroum, and took up his quarters in the town.
On the same night, just as Denniston, Stoker, and myself were sitting down to a good dinner in our comfortable quarters, four Russian doctors, who had come in with Melikoff, called at our house. They belonged to the Russian Red Cross Society, and explained that they did not know where to go for the night; so we sent their horses round to our stable, and we invited them to dine with us and stay the night—an invitation which they gladly accepted. We gave them a capital dinner, which they enjoyed very much; and the only thing that marred the complete success of the gathering was the difficulty under which conversational intercourse had to be carried on.
It was on this occasion that my deplorable deficiencies in the matter of conversational French actually endangered my life, which I had managed to preserve up till then, in spite of shot and shell, fever and frostbite. Neither Stoker nor Stiven had pursued his studies in the language of diplomacy much farther than the irregular verbs which tormented them in their fourth-form days at school; and my own French, painfully acquired during my early days in Australia, and never afterwards improved by practice, was distinctly of the Stratford-atte-Bow variety. Consequently the natural embarrassment of finding conversation for the enemy within our gates as well as dinner was increased by the difficulty which we experienced in achieving any remark which we considered it in good taste to utter. Drifting naturally to professional subjects, I made a reference to our colleagues Dr. Casson and Dr. Buckby, who were captured by Cossacks on their way from Kars to Erzeroum, after having been under fire with Mukhtar Pasha's troops at the fighting round Eolia-tepe and Nalban-tepe. I wanted to say that I had heard that the Russians treated the two doctors who were taken prisoners with great kindness, and made things as pleasant as possible for them. What I did say, however, falling into the common schoolboy error of attempting to render an idiom in one language by a phrase of similar sound in another, was this. "J'ai entendu," I remarked, with a smile intended to convey grateful appreciation of services rendered, but which was interpreted as a sinister and sardonic grimace denoting a deliberate intention to insult, "que vous avez fait beaucoup de plaisanteries pour nos deux amis." There was an awkward pause. It was just that sort of pause which occurs at a large dinner party when you inquire audibly from your neighbour the name of the hideously ugly woman who is sitting opposite, and he replies that it is his wife. Then the four Russian doctors began to jabber excitedly to each other, and one of them, jumping to his feet, hurled half a dozen rapid sentences at me, which I dimly felt denoted astonishment, anger, and a demand for satisfaction. It was very clear that I had put my foot in it somehow; but to correct my mistake I strove in vain. The more I said the less it pleased our guests, who loudly insisted upon a duel. This was a pretty go. Morisot, who would have been my best friend in this emergency, was unfortunately in Constantinople; but necessity sharpens one's wits wonderfully, and it flashed upon me in a moment that Magack, the owner of the gold coin with the bull's head that was stamped during the reign of the second Persian king, could speak French admirably. Accordingly the invaluable numismatist was summoned in hot haste; and although I am sure that he never forgave me for not buying that bull's head, he condescended to explain to our guests the difficulty in which the defects of my education had landed me. The Russian doctors turned out to be very good fellows after all, and when they left us General Melikoff sent an aide to thank us for the hospitality which we had shown to them.
Captain Serge Pizareff was the name of the aide-de-camp who came to call on us, and a very pleasant young fellow he was. He told us that the Russians would make a formal entry into the town next day; and that if we liked to see the spectacle, he would send us horses and place himself at our disposal, an offer which, needless to say, we accepted.
There was one thing about Captain Serge Pizareff which struck me very favourably. He had been to England, and spoke English as well as most Englishmen. I argued from that circumstance that the Russian doctors must have dropped a hint as to our deficiencies in the matter of French; but I was prepared to overlook the humiliation for the sake of the convenience.
We got a capital view of the spectacle, thanks to the kindness of Captain Pizareff; for some Cossacks brought us horses in the morning, and we rode out to the large open space inside the walls where the demonstration was to take place. It was a most impressive demonstration. Outside the town a corps d'armée of sixty thousand Russian troops, belonging to all branches of the service, was stationed in the various villages. It was not deemed advisable to bring them all in at once; but detachments from every regiment, including cavalry, infantry, and artillery, were marched forward and brigaded outside the gates. Then at the word of command, while the bands played the regimental quicksteps, they came forward, with colours flying, and entered Erzeroum without striking a blow, across the ground where those same regiments had been swept by the fire from the redoubts along the walls a couple of months before, and had been hurled back in terrible disorder.
General Melikoff reviewed his troops in the great open space between the town and the redoubts which defended the walls. It was a crisp, clear, exhilarating day, and the hard, smooth surface of the glistening snow was still strong enough to bear the troops without sinking in, though here and there an officer's horse would put his foot through the solid crust into the soft powdery snow below and flounder back again, plunging and snorting.
We three Englishmen sat there on the Cossacks' shaggy, hardy little horses, and watched with mingled feelings the triumphant military display of the great Northern power which was celebrating the close of a victorious campaign. We guessed by a kind of instinct that England herself had come within measurable distance of war with the same great power; but we scarcely realized that the issue was still hanging in the balance, and that the steady hand of one man held the scales of war and peace. The treaty of San Stefano had just been signed. This document, which the Sultan ratified on March 3, concluded the war between Russia and Turkey; but the Ottoman Government had to buy peace at a price. Not only was an indemnity of three hundred million roubles secured to Russia, but she also took large possessions in Asia Minor and enormous advantages in Europe.
While we sat on the horses of the Cossack irregulars listening to the huzzas of the Russian troops, Lord Beaconsfield, with the provisions of the treaty before him, was evolving the policy of England. It was not until May 15 that he returned to London with Lord Salisbury, after the Berlin Congress, bringing back "peace with honour."